Category Archives: Renewable Energy

Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal
(WABE, 14 Nov 2012)
temporarily forgot that “conservative”
includes conserving something,


like

Theodore Roosevelt and national parks,
or when

Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife
Refuge which also

administers Banks Lake, when

Richard Nixon started the EPA,
and when

Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act.
If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to
be a liberal working for water for our state!


Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen



listed the biggest boondoggle
of all as

#11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle
suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost
as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes

are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In

2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law
letting Georgia
Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle,
to the tune of

about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

Continue reading →

Substandard fire protection at nuclear Plant Hatch?

Does Hatch nuclear Unit 1 have substandard fire protection, like
many reactors built before 1975?
Protection against fires that the NRC says cause about half
the core damage risk, such as at Fukushima, which is the same
design as Hatch?

According to Simplyfy.org 2 Jan 2012,

Fire Risk At Older Japan Reactors Shows Potential Worldwide Problem,


The [Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority] NRA announced recently that
reactors built before 1975 likely have sub standard fire protection
designs. This includes having important cables coated in fire resistant
insulation, isolating and protecting cables and creating barriers to
prevent fires from spreading to other areas of critical equipment.


Source:
The Mainichi, 1 Jan 2013,

Over 10 nuclear plants in Japan have flawed fire-prevention equipment: sources.



What else was built before 1975?
Plant Hatch Unit 1

“Operating License: Issued – 10/13/1974”,
according to the U.S. NRC.

100 miles from here,
and the same design as Fukushima.

DOE also instituted upgrades and changes to their reactor facilities
which included facility modifications as a result of Browns Ferry
fire. Private sector nuclear power reactors in the US are not all
fully up to the newer rules. The NRC has issued a number of
exemptions that watchdog groups have criticized as being unsafe.
Browns Ferry still does not meet the NRC fire rules for cables. 47
of 52 reactors in the US still do not comply with the 1980 fire
regulations.

Plant Hatch is privately owned and operated.
Has it been upgraded?

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Carbon bubble? Solar and wind erode coal, gas, and biomass credit quality —Moody’s



In Europe it’s already happening: solar and wind are causing
bond-rater Moody’s to warn of downgrades of energy companies
that depend on heat from burning coal, gas, or biomass.
Moody’s earlier even warned the Bank of England
of a potential carbon bubble developing.
If combustion energy plants are affected like this,
the credit effects will be even bigger on even-more-expensive
nuclear plants, which Moody’s called a

bet-the-farm risk way back in 2009.

James Murray wrote for businessGreen 6 Nov 2012,

Moody’s: Renewables boom poses credit risk for coal and gas power plants:
Credit ratings agency warns increases in renewable power have had ‘a
profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal
generation companies,

“Large increases in renewables have had a profound negative impact
on power prices and the competitiveness of thermal generation
companies in Europe,” said Scott Phillips, an assistant vice
president and analyst at Moody’s Infrastructure Finance Group, in a
statement.

“What were once considered stable companies have seen their business
models severely disrupted and we expect steadily rising levels of
renewable energy output to further affect European utilities’
creditworthiness.”

And not just rising, rising increasingly

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Net zero school in Bowling Green KY



Why stop with
solar Lowndes High or VHS?
Why not have all our elementary and middle schools
generate more solar electricity than they use, and
change their power bills into profits to help pay for education?
A school in Bowling Green, Kentucky is already doing that.

Chuck Mason wrote for bgdailynews.com 22 December 2012,

‘Net-zero’ school pays off,

The district received a check for $37,227.31 this year. The
Tennessee Valley Authority paid the school district for electricity
it generated. The school district doesn’t have a power plant, per
se, like the utility company. But it does have an energy producer,


the first “net-zero” school in the nation: Richardsville
Elementary School.

The check is tangible evidence that net-zero pays for itself and
then some.

“It has exceeded expectations. We’re seeing a savings of
millions of dollars in energy costs,” state Rep. Jim DeCesare,
R-Bowling Green, said of the net-zero schools concept developing
across the nation.

This is the same Bowling Green, Kentucky that has fast Internet access.
Maybe that’s another reason

the Chamber might want to consider comparing Bowling Green and Warren County
to here.

-jsq

Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?

Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s

maybe “next decade” for solar power?


Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers

trying to push solar off for fifty years?
Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done:
Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International
Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.

Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012,

Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride

When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously
obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While
industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering
with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would
design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel
hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the
streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more


functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June.
It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old
gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300
miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds,
slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has
room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its
battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you
charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a
week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont,
California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….

And since that story:

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2012 solar deployments driven by Moore’s Law price reductions


Moore's Law in solar Watts/$100

Moore’s Law for solar is about decreasing price per Watt,
or more Watts per dollar.
Here’s an example of a common confusion, to think it’s about efficiency:

“The curve will obviously become asymptotic at some point, ie,. the rate
of improvement will flatten out, so we end up with a sort of squashed
“S” shape curve, because you can’t get more than 100% efficiency —
36 watts/m2 or so.”

And indeed efficiency probably will flatten out soon.
But it’s not solar
efficiency that’s improving by Moore’s Law: it’s price per watt.
That can keep improving for a long time.

Here’s an example of decreasing price.
Scott Detrow wrote for NPR 23 December 2012,

Forget Fracking: 2012 Was A Powerful Year For Renewables,


Rhone Resch
“Just to give you perspective,” Resh said, “in Washington, D.C.,
where I live, when I installed solar on my house six years ago, the
average install cost was about $14 a watt. Today it’s about $4 a
watt.”

Here’s another comparison, this one just for solar panels.

KC 170 solar panels, purchased 2005
In 2005 the first set of solar panels we got cost $670 each
and produced 170 Watts DC each, or $4.94/Watt.
In 2011 our second set of solar panels cost $562 each
for 235 Watts DC each, or $2.39/Watt.
That’s more than 50% price decrease for solar panels in six years.
(I can’t compare inverters or support structures directly,
because those were sized so differently, but those have also
come down in price, helping lower the overall install cost).

Year price /Watt price /panel Watts /panel Dimens. square inches Watts /100 sq in. Model
2005 $4.94 $670 170W 50×39″ 1950 8.7 KC 170
2011 $2.39 $562 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ
2012 $1.32 $310 235W 39.1×64.6″ 2525 9.3 Sharp ND 235 QCJ

Meanwhile, the Watts per surface area hardly changed, from about

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Industrial Authority working for solar in south Georgia @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

The

Industrial Authority
is working to find locations for some of the
210 MW Georgia Power got the PSC to shift
from biomass to solar back in September.
That’s a good next step.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 23 Dec 2012,

Solar power push has Authority working to establish connections,

Since the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Georgia

Allan Ricketts, Projects and Existing Industry Manager, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
Power Company’s plan Nov. 20 to add 210 megawatts of solar power to
its electrical grid, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial
Authority has been devising strategies to draw solar energy
producers to South Georgia.

Georgia Power will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) from solar
energy collection and production companies in early 2013, according
to the PSC, and the company will contract with the lowest bidders to
purchase their energy and place it on the Georgia Power electrical
grid for public consumption.

Georgia Power plans to add 90 megawatts to its grid from distributed
generation (small companies producing between 100 kilowatts and 1
megawatt), and 120 megawatts of large utility-scale projects
producing up to 20 megawatts each. The company plans to price the
solar energy at $0.13 per kWh for distributed generation and up to
$0.12 per kWh for utility-scale projects, according to the PSC.

This government-approved commercial push for solar energy could be a
boon to sunny South Georgia as well as the greater Valdosta area
specifically, and the Authority is prepared to accommodate the solar
energy producers they expect.


Andrew Schruijer, Executive Director, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
“I think there’s a very good possibility of solar energy
coming to South Georgia,” Executive Director Andrea Schruijer
said. “Possibly in the near future.”

There’s more in the VDT story.
It’s pretty much what
Col. Ricketts also told me after the VLCIA meeting Tuesday a week ago.
He asked me if I knew what “distributed” meant.
I pointed out Georgia Power’s version of distributed was actually not
very distributed, compared to

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Fracking: coming soon to a state near you?

Lest you think fracking is something that happens only in faraway
places like

Alberta
or Pennsylvania,
look at
this map of North American shale gas basins,
extending right through the Appalachians from Pennsylvania through
West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina into Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi.


Source:

Canada fracking creates ‘test tube‘ residents in B.C., Alberta,
by Lynn Herrmann for Digital Journal 5 January 2012.

How long before Georgia Power or Southern Company decide natural
gas would be even cheaper if they fracked in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi?
How long until

unavoidable human error
starts fracking polluting our local groundwater and rivers?
For that matter, isn’t it bad enough already that other people’s
water is fracked for cheap gas in Georgia?

We could just

get on with solar power,
which doesn’t spill.

-jsq

Frack human error

What do you get in a solar spill?
A sunny day.
What do you get in a fracking spill?
Polluted groundwater and drinking water.
When do you get it?
Whenever somebody makes a mistake, which turns out to be frequently.


Alberta Finds Mismanagement of Errors Causes Fracking Water Contamination,

“There is no amount of regulation that can overcome human error,”


said Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) spokesman
Darin Barter. ERCB released an investigation report that cites
inadequate management of risks as one of the main causes of a
September 2011 accident that contaminated groundwater with toxic
hydraulic fracturing chemicals, including the cancer causing agent
known as BTEX (benzene, toulene, ethylbenzene, and xylene).

At least the company involved in this particular incident did something about it:

Personnel from Crew Energy told the Calgary Herald the company is
“embarrassed” about the accident. Rob Morgan, chief operating
officer for Crew said, “there’s no question of our appreciation of
the severity of this,” adding, “pretty much all of the personnel who
were involved in this particular circumstance are no longer with the
company.”

But the groundwater is still contaminated.
And where will they find replacement personnel who will never make mistakes?

Meanwhile, a solar spill is called a nice day.

-jsq

 

What is Moore’s Law for solar power?

Many people are unfamiliar with Moore’s Law, and

how it affects solar power.
Moore’s Law doesn’t occur
in many technologies or industries,
but it’s there in solar photovoltaic (PV).
For those of us whose whole working lives have been
affected by Moore’s Law, seeing it turn up in another field
is like a flashing neon sign pointing to the future.
A future of distributed solar power sunrise
over the crumbling industrial relics of coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants.
A future with much less control by monopoly utilities,
which is why they fight it.
If they even see it coming; Bill Gates didn’t, back in the day,
but Jeff Bezos of Amazon did.
They both surfed that tide,
and Moore’s Law made both of them among the richest humans on the planet
while changing the world for all of us.
Steve Jobs even used it to put a computer in your pocket
more powerful than big companies could buy a few decades ago.
What does Moore’s Law for solar power mean for electric power?

This chart shows the telltale symptom of Moore’s Law in solar electricity:
65% compound annual growth rate in solar power plants
deployed for the past 5 years:


Source:
Solar Power Graphs to Make You Smile
by Zachary Shahan for CleanTechnica 10 June 2011.

As SunPower’s Dinwoodie puts it:

That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power
plants — manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It
can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that.
I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well,
that’s 17 GW of “cute” adding up at an astonishing pace.



Bill Gates should recall that Moore’s Law made formerly “cute” PCs with his
“cute” operating system Windows expand into every company in the world
and made him the second richest human on the planet.
Growth of computer software markets,

like for the U.S. as shown in the graph on the right,
is a symptom of the original Moore’s Law.
Software runs on hardware, and these hardware market curves
are driven more directly by Moore’s Law:

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